Slashdot Mirror
Amazon's Home Security Company Is Turning Everyone Into Cops (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Neighbors is not just a social media app: it's a service that's meant to be used with Ring security cameras, a Wi-Fi-powered home security company that was acquired by Amazon last February in a $1 billion deal. Neighbors was launched in May 2018, three months after the acquisition. If you have Ring security cameras, you can upload video content straight from your security camera to Neighbors. [...] Beyond creating a "new neighborhood watch," Amazon and Ring are normalizing the use of video surveillance and pitting neighbors against each other. Chris Gilliard, a professor of English at Macomb Community College who studies institutional tech policy, told Motherboard in a phone call that such a "crime and safety" focused platforms can actively reinforces racism.
In Amazon's version of a "new neighborhood watch," petty crimes are policed heavily, and racism is common. Video posts on Neighbors disproportionately depict people of color, and descriptions often use racist language or make racist assumptions about the people shown. In many ways, the Neighbors/Ring ecosystem is like a virtual gated community: people can opt themselves in by downloading the Neighbors app, and with a Ring camera, users can frame neighbors as a threat. Motherboard individually reviewed more than 100 user-submitted posts in the Neighbors app between December 6 and February 5, and the majority of people reported as "suspicious" were people of color. Motherboard placed the "home" address at the VICE offices in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and kept the default 5-mile neighborhood radius, meaning the neighborhood encompassed all of lower Manhattan, most of Brooklyn, and parts of Queens and Hoboken. According to the Ring Community Guidelines, the Neighbors app bans "direct threats against any individuals, bullying, harassment, and any posts that demean, defame, or discriminate," but it relies on Neighbors users to report posts that violate that rule. The guidelines also claim that only "crime and safety related content" is allowed. The guidelines do not define what qualifies as "safety," but they do encourage users to "consider the behavior that made you suspicious and whether such suspicion is reasonable."
When asked if Ring moderates content on Neighbors or reviews posts for racism, a company spokesperson said, "The Neighbors app by Ring is meant to facilitate this collaboration within communities by allowing users to easily share and communicate with their neighbors and in some cases, local law enforcement, about crime and safety in real-time."
In Amazon's version of a "new neighborhood watch," petty crimes are policed heavily, and racism is common. Video posts on Neighbors disproportionately depict people of color, and descriptions often use racist language or make racist assumptions about the people shown. In many ways, the Neighbors/Ring ecosystem is like a virtual gated community: people can opt themselves in by downloading the Neighbors app, and with a Ring camera, users can frame neighbors as a threat. Motherboard individually reviewed more than 100 user-submitted posts in the Neighbors app between December 6 and February 5, and the majority of people reported as "suspicious" were people of color. Motherboard placed the "home" address at the VICE offices in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and kept the default 5-mile neighborhood radius, meaning the neighborhood encompassed all of lower Manhattan, most of Brooklyn, and parts of Queens and Hoboken. According to the Ring Community Guidelines, the Neighbors app bans "direct threats against any individuals, bullying, harassment, and any posts that demean, defame, or discriminate," but it relies on Neighbors users to report posts that violate that rule. The guidelines also claim that only "crime and safety related content" is allowed. The guidelines do not define what qualifies as "safety," but they do encourage users to "consider the behavior that made you suspicious and whether such suspicion is reasonable."
When asked if Ring moderates content on Neighbors or reviews posts for racism, a company spokesperson said, "The Neighbors app by Ring is meant to facilitate this collaboration within communities by allowing users to easily share and communicate with their neighbors and in some cases, local law enforcement, about crime and safety in real-time."
Racism exists because black people commit basically all the crime. If they stopped then people would complain about mexicans instead.
I'm as racist as the next person, but poor people commit basically all the crime. Keeping minorities in poverty through through subjective (nowadays virtually silent) bias, merely ensures they will live up to the stereotype you have carved out for them.
This is somewhat different from profiling, which is an often individually observed behavior based on probability. LEOs looking for drug mules pull over vehicles piloted by young male hispanic & black occupants with far more frequency than vehicles piloted by blue haired older ladies.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
such a "crime and safety" focused platforms can actively reinforces racism.
That's unpossible!
It's also bullshit.
"Motherboard individually reviewed more than 100 user-submitted posts in the Neighbors app between December 6 and February 5, and the majority of people reported as "suspicious" were people of color. "
In New York City (where they found this example of "racism") non-whites are responsible for 93% of all murders and 80% of all robberies. People have very good reason to be suspicious of "people of color".
Keep up the good work, VICE, and don't let facts get in the way of trying to make everything into a problem of "racism".
I watch my neighborhood at night through a night vision scope. So everyone looks green.
Have gnu, will travel.
Going AC for this post for reasons...
There are of course shades (inappropriate pun intended) of racism. On one extreme there are the genocidal racists. Then you have those who just make assumptions based on race.
I've been guilty of this when I was younger. My exposure to black people consisted of 4 people, 2 students in my class and our maid and our lawn guy. They were hard-working and the students were intelligent, but I viewed these 4 examples of black people as exceptions, which I have now come to believe was wrong.
Since then I have met many more people of all races and I've seen examples of hard-working, intelligent humans and I've also seen those who I would consider the scum of the earth. I don't see a whole lot of correlation to so-called "race".
And you also have to take into account socio-economic factors. When everyone expects you to be a criminal, lazy or stupid one might tend to live down to those expectations. If black Americans seem less educated, it might have something to do with the shitty schools we send them to. If Asian people seem smarter, it just may be that only the privileged and/or smart ones get to come over, at least for the most part.
I've been slumming around the Fox News comments section way too much lately and the racism is so blatant I can't believe no one calls them out for it.
When Jayme Closs escaped her kidnapper, it took nearly a day for the cops to release the name and picture of her assailant. During that time the big question on 90% of the commenters minds was whether he was black or an illegal immigrant or Mexican.
Oops, he was white.
And when 4 cops were shot executing a warrant in Houston the same thing happened. They said the reason they haven't announced the suspect's names or pictures was obviously because they were black or Mexican (which is of course a term they use for anyone with a Spanish-sounding name, even people from Italy). And again all they could agree on is it had to be one or the other.
Of course the reason the names were not immediately released is because 4 cops had just been shot and they were trying to investigate everything and figure out just exactly happened while 4 of them who were there were lying in the hospital.
And once again the suspects were white.
I'm white and I'm sick of racists. Can you imagine how black people feel?
-----
Oh, and remember last year when Trump said it's "a very scary time for young men in America"?
Did everyone forget how Trump reacted to the Central Park Five?
To summarize a woman was brutally assaulted in 1989 and 4 blacks and one Hispanic were convicted despite very shaky evidence. Trump took out full page ads before the trial proclaiming them guilty and calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty.
Based on DNA evidence and a confession from someone else their sentences were vacated in 2002 and yet Trump still kept proclaiming their guilt as recently as 2016.
What he REALLY meant was "It's a scary time for WHITE males who might actually have to suffer the same kind of injustices that we've put minorities through for all of our history. MAGA!!!!!"